The 2004 Space Transportation Forecastsis now available. Link via RLV News.
Note the very cool cover art by Phil Smith, who AFAIK accepts commissions, so if you’re a startup looking for some artwork, drop him an email.
Jeff Foust, friend of TTM, blogger, and fellow-traveler in the alt.space underground also worked on the report.
Now this is a much more creative (and probably effective) way to herd errant asteroids than crude nukes.
Just a reminder, for those interested, that the Centennial Challenges Workshop is coming up the middle of next month in Washington, for anyone who wants to attend and influence the direction of NASA’s new prize program.
The New America Foundation has put together a cartoon guide to Federal Spectrum Policy. Quite apart from being a fan of cartoon guides to whatever, I’m a fan of rational technology policy, which the Federal policy towards spectrum allocation isn’t. I don’t know much about the New America Foundation other than what’s on their website, but the analysis of spectrum policy is basically right, if a little, um… cartoonish.
Hat tip: Maria Farrell at Crooked Timber
These guys are trying to stop a series of idiotic lawsuits which threaten to kill general aviation. Their opponents are the usual NIMBY morons who won’t get a link out of me because I refuse to move them up Google’s page ranking. Check out their quotes page for some astonishing statements by the NIMBYs. I’m sympathetic to concerns about noise, but there are ways to deal with it without stomping on other people’s liberties.
The Great Wall of China, a river, whatever…it’s all good.
ESA doesn’t seem to know the difference.
Andrew Sullivan points out that Susan Sontag is vying for one of his Susan Sontag awards:
…the cover story in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine is a Susan Sontag essay. Yes, she’s going to write about Abu Ghraib. And – yes! – the headline is: “The Photographs Are Us.”
Fine, Susan. I’ll consider the possibility that “the photographs are us” when you and other people in the intelligentsia and media will admit that people like this are you.
“Fortune Favors The Bold”
That’s apparently the motto of the new Exploration Office, complete with logo.
Hmmm…tell it to the Islamonutballs who attack our forces in Iraq and other places, and get generally slaughtered. Methinks that it’s one of those things that’s a necessary, but not sufficient condition. Smartness is required as well as boldness.
[Hat tip to emailer Ken Talton]
Don Peterson has a long disquisition at SpaceRef about why we shouldn’t go to Mars via the moon.
The problem with this, of course, is that it presumes that the only goal is to go to Mars. He seems to recognize no intrinsic value in returning to the moon, or in establishing a base there. He’s welcome to his opinion, of course, but that’s not in concert with the president’s goals, and in my opinion, he’s wrong. There are many reasons to go back to the moon, as were laid out by several witnesses to the Aldridge commission a few weeks ago, regardless of its eventual utility in supporting a Mars flight.
The post Rand links to below brings up some issues that have been floating around in the amateur rocketry community for some time. There are some people within the community who claim that there is no realistic problem, but they are simply wrong. If amateur rocket scientists are to have any relevance to opening the high frontiers they will develop weapons relevant technologies. The simple and obvious reason for this is that rockets are a transportation technology, and as such they can be used to transport harmful payloads just as aircraft, boats, and trucks can.